tradicije

Part 3: They said a phone can’t run without a battery. Unfortunately, Pettyl didn’t get the memo. This post is an update of the second part of my Moto server series: lemmy.zip/post/72142441 Rumor has it that keeping an 8-year-old phone permanently plugged in with its equally ancient Li-ion battery might not be the greatest idea ever conceived. Some even claimed that a phone needs a battery to work. Very negative people. Anyway, I removed it. Pettyl did not care. nginx: UP PHP-FPM: UP MariaDB: UP WordPress: UP cloudflared: UP sshd: UP The battery is currently sitting next to the phone, contributing absolutely nothing to the project. Pettyl is now running entirely from USB power, at around 37°C, while continuing to serve the website like this is completely normal. There is, however, one tiny detail the haters may enjoy: It can’t boot without the battery. So the official Pettyl disaster recovery procedure is now: Insert battery Boot Pettyl Connect USB power Remove battery Pretend this is enterprise infrastructure The battery is no longer a battery. It is the starter motor. I see no problems with this architecture. Anyway, Part 3 is going great.

Update: I turned my old Motorola E5 Play into an actual WordPress server We did it boys! Battery is no more: lemmy.zip/post/72181546 This post is a follow-up to my original post: lemmy.zip/post/71885626 Surprisingly, it wasn’t that tough to set up. My original plan was to install postmarketOS and turn the phone into a proper tiny Linux server. Unfortunately, my Moto E5 Play is the pettyl variant, while the available postmarketOS port is for james. I decided that turning the phone into a brick probably wasn’t an essential part of the project. So I went with Termux instead. It’s now running nginx, PHP, MariaDB, WordPress, SSH and cloudflared directly on the phone. Everything starts automatically on boot, and I even made a tiny WordPress plugin for anonymous Today / Total / Online visitor stats. And yes, the website is being served by the exact phone in the photo. 1 GB of RAM. Somehow this thing is now a production server. I named it Pettyl, after the device codename. You can actually visit it at moto.dimitrium.org. The website is barebones, I plan to push it to the limits. Also, this project will soon be available on my GitHub page github.com/tradicije Next problem: figuring out how long an old Motorola can tolerate my bullshit.

Home server on old android phones? Hey guys, since I got into hosting my own servers, any electronic device I see I wonder - can it become a server? This is probably not a crazy and new idea with android phones, but I had to share it with you. If you don’t know, there’s this thing called postmarket OS, full linux experience on an android phone. Of course, not all phones are supported, but a phone like Galaxy Note 9 is a great candidate - it supports LAN over usb, postmarket OS fully supports it (the Exinos version) and setting up a phone as a selfhosted server has it’s real perks. Pis got really expensive, not to mention they don’t have a built-in UPS (phones have batteries), they use slow SD cards, while phones have faster UFS memory, phones draw way less power. What do you guys think? I will for sure get a used Galaxy Note 9 and explore this idea, and if all goes well, I might even buy more of them and create a cluster.

Thanks! I’ll check it out

Yeah, I think creating a custom script for it won’t be an issue, for example when battery hits 80% it stops charging, and resumes charging when it hits 40%

I get that, using phones as servers is a pain because of cooling, but I was thinking maybe wire a fan to a custom made 3d printed rack, and also create a script for batteries, so the phones are not charging not stop. Creating a cluster could help me self host more websites I create as I want to move away from using hosting services, I do have 2 mini pcs as servers right now, but they are kinda shit.

Nah, an actual UPS with 7kg batteries is way cooler. But I really appreciate the feedback!